Soil property variations in relation to exclosure and open grazing land use types in the Central Rift Valley area of Ethiopia

Abstract

Land degradation and unsustainable management practices have resulted in soil organic carbon and nutrient depletion, hydrological instability, reduced primary productivity, and low biological diversity. In response to these problems, communities in the Central Rift Valley area of Ethiopia have started to establish exclosures about three decades ago. This study has investigated the variations in selected soil properties (soil textural fractions, bulk density, soil moisture content, pH (H2O) and soil organic carbon content) under two land use types: open grazing land and exclosures in the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia. Results showed that soil organic carbon varied significantly with land use types (p = 0.040), soil depths (p = 0.010) and the interaction effect (p = 0.039). The soil moisture content showed significant variation (p < 0.0001) only with soil depth. Exclosure land use type has shown an improvement in soil organic carbon against the findings by Mekuria et al. [International Conferenceon Advances in Agricultural, Biological & Environmental Sciences(AABES-2014), Dubai (UAE) 2014]. Thus, highly degraded open grazing should be designated as exclosure land management zone to restore and rehabilitate severely degraded landscape in the fragile environment of the rift valley area of Ethiopia.